How To Optimize Brand Video To Make The Most Of Your Native Ad Placements

Many brand marketers are unsure about how to build native video creative that is suited for the smaller mobile screen and their in-feed native placements. Many advertisers simply repurpose existing videos intended for television or pre-roll, but when it is not properly optimized these videos often underperform.

Here at Sharethrough we have identified a set of best practices that any brand should keep in mind when building native video and measuring its effectiveness.

With headlines, a logo, and silent autoplay, native video can be optimized to accomplish brand awareness goals in under ten seconds.

Keep the video short

Most in-feed video will be viewed on a mobile device where people are less likely to watch long videos, even ones they’ve chosen to engage with. Fifteen seconds is a good rule of thumb for your native video.

The good news is that most thirty-second ads can easily be cut down to fifteen seconds and many creative agencies are already making shorter spots.

If you do have a longer form video you want to promote, it’s important that you build in some kind of hook early on in the video to make sure viewers stick around.

Include text in the video

In-feed video typically autoplays on mute and users will only hear your video if they choose to engage with it. To make the most of muted views, include text throughout the video, particularly in the first few seconds. Platforms like Facebook and Sharethrough now offer captioning services.

Make the first seconds of the video count

Advertisers can make an impact on viewers by packing the first few seconds of a video with as much substance as possible. Make sure that the product you’re promoting appears somewhere in the first five seconds. Cut right to the action. Don’t waste precious time building up to it.

If you do have a longer form video you want to promote, it’s important that you build in some kind of hook early on in the video to make sure viewers stick around.

Use the headline for context

There’s a limit to how much you can convey in fifteen seconds, or even thirty. With native video, the headline provides brands with another asset to play with, allowing them to boost the messaging potential of their ad. Headlines are especially important when running long form videos that require longer attention and engagement.

Native Video Measurement: Completion Rates Ain’t What They Used To Be

One of the realities of native video is that 100 percent completion rates (or anything close) aren't as realistic any more. Completion rates of 50, 75 or 100 percent are a legacy of older video formats: conventional pre-roll and broadcast television.

Typical completion rates for choice-based video hover around 25 percent; that’s for everything from skippable pre-roll, to Twitter ads, to Facebook video. And yet many advertisers still insist on artificially high completion rates. This despite evidence that native video ads can achieve brand lift goals in as little as three seconds. Research from Facebook has shown that the first ten seconds of a video can drive up to 74 percent of the total impact to ad recall, brand awareness and purchase intent.

This is the main advantage of native video over any other video ad format. With headlines, a logo, and silent autoplay, native video can be optimized to accomplish brand awareness goals in under ten seconds.